PLATE III   Café, mid-morning. Edges occupied.

NOTE 02 · CHAPTER I

The seat by the wall

HABITAT    Cafés, libraries, waiting rooms

Seats along walls and windows tend to go first,4 and people linger in them; in one restaurant study, diners at exposed tables in busy aisles finished sooner.5 A view out with something solid behind — “prospect and refuge,” in landscape theory6 — may simply feel safer to an animal that spent a long time watching for whatever might be watching it.